Re-Elect Jim Moeller

According to National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession began in December 2007, some fourteen months before the last legislative session.  This downturn has been dubbed the Great Recession for its eerie resemblance to the Depression of the 1930s and in the way it’s so much more destructive then all recessions since the end of World war II.  Those of us who are long-term Washingtonians will remember the terrible recession of the early eighties when a crash in home construction devastated the local economy, which at the time was still very tied to the timber industry.  As a point of comparison, this recession is two to three times deeper, as measured by impacted industries and several times longer.

Wall Street’s destructive behavior, the inevitable result of a financial industry that got the deregulation they paid for, has dug a deep hole that has not only ensnared the American economy, but the economies of our trading partners, meaning that just at the moment when we need to be able to sell more of our products abroad, the people who buy our software, food, aircraft, and technology are facing many of the same problems we face.

The road back begins with first keeping good jobs.

I have endeavored to do just that by working to keep Larch Mountain Correctional Facility open, and by making sure the basic education and health care infrastructure of the region remain strong.  Since our new jobs will come from people creating new small businesses, I worked to double the size of the B&O tax exemption, and on transportation projects to improve freight mobility or targeted tax credits for renewable energy.

On a macro-economic level, our state will not become a job creating place again if we are to lose our credit standing.  Unlike California, Washington has retained her golden credit rating even in the face of a revenue shortfall of a scale unseen since the final year of the Truman administration.  As a leader in the legislature, I worked to make sure we were responsible, balancing our books, but NOT on the backs of the most vulnerable, and NOT at the expense of investments in the future such as education.  Our strategic thinking included keeping taxes relatively low for small business, not resorting to an income tax, and where taxes had to be raised, choosing taxes on items that are not necessities.

This combination not only preserved our state’s credit standing, it’s made Washington one of the most business friendly states in the union, according to several business magazines.  No one should be tempted into the counter-intuitive resolution that we would make ourselves more attractive to investment by walking away form our state’s tradition of excellent education and decent care for all.  Our state’s well-educated workforce, and the fact that we DO take care of our citizens when they are in real need, creates a place that’s very attractive to the entrepreneurs who will invent the next Boeing, Microsoft or Starbucks (all made in Washington!).

Creating real jobs, with real pay, that have a real chance to be sustainable, has been, and continues to be my number one priority.

Your Representative,

Jim